The detection of defects and/or of the presence of foreign substances on semiconductor wafers has received considerable attention in the art. Defects can be caused by an imperfect production of the desired pattern. Further, particles of various kinds may adhere to a wafer surface for a number of reasons.
The inspection process can be carried out on bare wafers, viz. wafers that have not yet been patterned, or on patterned wafers. This invention relates primarily to the inspection of patterned wafers.
Prior art devices are used in order to detect defects and particles of the type described above in patterned wafers. Examples of prior art apparatus comprise devices based on the direct comparison of different dies. Such apparatus, which will be further referred to below with respect to specific references, presents the following drawbacks: 1) it is relatively very expensive, as it requires high mechanical precision; 2) it has low throughput; 3) it has a large footprint; 4) it needs an expert operator; 5) it is not suitable for inline inspection (i.e., it operates on wafers which have been previously removed from the fabrication line), and therefore is unsuitable for purposes of process control and monitoring, of the kind addressed by the present invention; 6) prior art devices are non-isotropic devices, i.e. they require a very precise alignment of the article being inspected. These facts impose constructive and operative constraints on the apparatus and on the inspection method.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,855, to Kyo Suda et al, includes in its Background of the Invention a list of various methods for performing semiconductor wafer inspections, and said list is incorporated herein by reference. One of said methods involves scanning the wafer surface with a laser beam and analyzing the number and direction of diffraction lights, produced by the pattern edges, by means of a plurality of light detection cells arranged cylindrically.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,345,312, to Toshikazu Yasuye et al, discloses a pattern inspecting method which comprises picking up an image from an article having a preset pattern whereby to extract the data of the pattern to be inspected, converting said data into a bit matrix of binary values, and comparing said matrix with a reference matrix representing an ideal pattern, to disclose any discrepancy between the pattern of the article and the ideal one.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,515, to Masakuni Akiba et al, discloses an inspection apparatus for determining the presence of foreign matters on the surface of a wafer, which apparatus includes a beam generator portion which projects a collimated beam towards the object to inspect it from a side thereof, and a mechanism which senses light reflected from the surface of the object, through a polarizer plate. Such methods, however, are obsolete inasmuch as they cannot be used with today's wafers having a design rule of 0.5 μm or less.
The same principle is used in several prior art methods and apparatus. Thus, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,331, to Mitsuyoshi Koizumi et al, the light reflected from the wafer surface is directed to a photoelectric tube and defects are detected by the irregularities of the voltage current outputted by the tube.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,875, to Masataka Shiba et al, makes reference to the aforesaid U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,515, and proposes a method and apparatus based on the same principle, in which a polarized laser beam irradiates the substrate from directions inclined with respect to the perpendicular to its surface and linearly scans said surface; and light reflected from foreign particles is detected by a polarized light analyzer sand a photoelectric conversion device.
The aforesaid U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,855 discloses a method of detecting defects, e.g. foreign particles, in which the diffraction light reflected from a wafer surface is analyzed by distinguishing between normal and abnormal directions. An ideal pattern formed on a wafer reflects diffraction lights in determined directions, at certain angles, which are considered normal directions. On the other hand, foreign particles reflect the light in other, abnormal directions. Reflection of light in abnormal directions indicates a departure of the pattern formed on the wafer from the real pattern, and therefore possible defects. In the invention of this reference, the abnormal direction signals are so applied as to determine whether they represent a true defect or a practically acceptable defect. Again, this method is obsolete due to the design rule of less than 1 μm.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,814,596, to Mitsuyoshi Koizumi et al, applies the said principle of analyzing polarized reflected light to identify defects. It cites the aforesaid U.S. Pat. No. 4,342,515 as well as Japanese Patent Applications Publication Nos. 54-101390, 55-94145 and 56-30630. In the apparatus of this reference, an S-polarized beam is arranged to illuminate the pattern present on the wafer. Since the irregularities in the surface of the pattern are sufficiently small, the S-polarized light is preserved in the reflected light. An analyzer is used to cut the S-polarized-light in the path of the reflected light, so that, if the reflected light includes a P-polarized light, this latter is detected by a photoelectric conversion element, indicating the presence of particles on the wafer.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,628,531, to Keiichi Okamoto et al, discloses a pattern checking apparatus, which reveals by a primary selection the presence of defects that may be tolerable or not, defined as “candidate defects”. The wafers having such defects are passed to a secondary selection, which distinguishes between those that are not defects in a practical sense and are acceptable, and those that are not acceptable. False alarms, viz. the detection in the primary selection of apparent defects, which are revealed in the secondary selection not to be real defects, are said to be caused, in prior art methods based on the comparison of patterns, by an imperfect registration of the patterns to be compared.
Another method of the prior art relates to inspection apparatus employing a planar array of individually addressable light valves for use as a spatial filter in an imaged Fourier plane of a diffraction pattern, with valves having a stripe geometry corresponding to positions of members of the diffraction pattern, blocking light from those members. The remaining valve stripes, i.e. those not blocking light from diffraction order members, are open for transmission of light. Light directed onto the surface, such as a semiconductor wafer, forms elongated curved diffraction orders from repetitive patterns of circuit features. The curved diffraction orders are transformed to linear orders by a Fourier transform lens. Various patterns of stripes can be recorded and compared. Related discussion can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,000,949 and 4,516,833.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,699,447 discloses and claims an apparatus which comprises first examining means for examining in a first phase the complete surface of the wafer with an optical beam of small diameter and for outputting information, indicating inspected locations on the article's surface having a high probability of a defect, storage means for storing the output of the first examining means, and second examining means for examining in a second phase and with a relatively high spatial resolution only the locations having a high probability of a defect and for outputting information indicating the presence or absence of a defect in said locations. The first examination phase is effected by making a comparison between the pattern of the inspected wafer and another pattern, serving as a reference pattern; and the second examination phase is carried out by a similar comparison to identify the locations in which the comparison shows such differences as to indicate the presence of a defect.
The methods and apparatus of the prior art have several drawbacks, partly discussed in the cited references, such as errors due to faulty registration and other causes, false alarms consisting in the detection of defects that are only apparent, and so on. All of them, further, have the common drawback of requiring complex apparatus, with high mechanical precision, and requiring long operation times and having therefore a low throughput.
It is therefore a purpose of this invention to eliminate the drawbacks of the prior art method and apparatus for the inspection of patterned semiconductor wafers, and particularly for determining the presence of particles of foreign substances.
It is another purpose of this invention to provide such a method and apparatus that operate at a much higher speed than prior art apparatus and with a much higher throughput.
It is a further purpose of this invention to detect the defects or suspected defects of surfaces, particularly of patterned, semiconductor wafers, by a system that does not require comparison of patterns.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to detect said defects or suspected defects by an inspection or testing of the pixels of the surface.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to detect said defects or suspected defects by an analysis of the optical response of the pixels of the surface to a scanning beam.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a wafer control method that is not based on a comparison of patterns, but is a pixel-based inspection.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a wafer control method and apparatus that are completely automatic and eliminate almost all possibility of human error.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide such a method and apparatus which are highly flexible or, in other words, that can be operated in such a way as to achieve the precision that is required in any particular processing situation.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for controlling the semiconductor wafers inline and immediately recognizing any failures or irregularities in the production process and apparatus.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a method and apparatus that permit to localize on the wafer surface the position of any suspected defects.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for a primary control of semiconductor wafers that facilitates carrying out a subsequent operation called herein a “vector die-to-die comparison”.
By the expression “vector die-to-die comparison” (abbreviated as VDDC) is meant, in this specification and claims, an operation the purpose of which to determine which of the suspected defects represent valid pattern data and which represent real defects. The preferred embodiment described herein requires firstly transforming the polar coordinates of the wafer inspecting apparatus—hereinafter “the machine coordinate system” —to the Cartesian coordinates of a system hereinafter defined—“the die coordinate system of the wafer”—Then, deriving from the coordinates that define the suspect pixels' location in the machine coordinate system the coordinates that define said location in the die coordinate system. Finally, the VDDC is an operation for discriminating, between suspect data that are actually produced by the wafer pattern and suspect data that are produced by real contamination by particles—all as will be fully explained hereinafter.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for the analysis of surfaces, even if they are not surfaces of patterned semiconductor wafers.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide an optical head which comprises, in a structural unit, all the optical elements required for irradiating the pixels of the surface with the beam used for scanning and collecting their optical response in the particular manner of this invention, as hereinafter described.
It is a still further purpose of this invention to provide an apparatus which effects the control of the pixels by a combination of such an optical head and means for displacing the surface relative to it.
Other purposes and advantages of the invention will appear as the description proceeds.